I’m in the early stages of developing an administration strategy for a jail server I’m setting up. It will run regression tests for Bacula. I’ve already found ezjail, which will help me create the jails. What I needed was tool for administering the jails. I don’t want to ssh to 10 different systems just to update a script on each one.

cfengine won because my $WORK uses it. Someone has to know about it. I might as well be one of them. I feel puppet might make my life easier, but we’ll see.

What really put me off cfengine was the lack of practical examples. There are many tutorials, but very little that starts off with a “here, do this, it will get you started” or “here’s a simple step-by-step to get a server and a client running”. That’s what is needed. Most of the cfengine documentation documents the commands, the syntax, and the theory. Sorry, but more is required, especially for complex products such as cfengine.

I had stated to my IRC fiends that I was going to give cfengine one last chance. If I didn’t get it working tonight, I was giving up on it and trying puppet. Thanks to the folks at the HEP Sysadmin Wiki, I was able to get a cfagent and cfservd talking to each other. There are a few things which could be clearer, and I plan to help update their wiki. If I can get a login that is….